An Unexpected Reason You Need a Hard Drive Crusher

If you’re like most people, you’ve owned at least one user computer; or maybe you’ve owned a computer for over 10 years that you bought new. Now it’s older. We’ve all heard that telltale hum of an older computer. We might not know exactly what it means. We’ve been meaning to Google it. If we ever take the computer to get it repaired, the first thing many technicians will do is listen to the hum to see how damaged or old the computer or laptop is. However, did you ever hear the hum and think it was talking to you? Yeah. Neither did we.

We also never thought that it was telling people things like our usernames, passwords, and social security numbers. But, guess what? It seems we were wrong. Go figure.

According to a recent, “What will they think of next?” article featured in Popular Mechanics in August 2016, the sounds that your computer hard drive makes can transmit secure information.

What Led to this Discovery?

Apparently, our intelligence agencies logically thought that their computers were more secure when they were not connected to the internet. Makes sense right? How can anyone gain remote access to an offline computer or unwanted hard drives when they haven’t had previous access to the machine?

However, reporter, Avery Thompson shared the findings of a new research study that took place at Ben-Gurion University. Researchers developed a form of malware that uses a listening phone to extract data from the sounds a hard drive makes.

Most hard drives store data on metal disks called platters. There is a moving arm inside the hard drive that has a magnetic head that reads the data by moving back and forth across the various platters. The arm is controlled by a motor. The motor controlling the arm and the magnetized head make sounds. The researchers have found a way to program the motor to transmit specific sounds that they can then record on a smartphone with a mic turned on.

According to Thompson,

“Although the speed of data transmission is slow—about 3 bits per second—that’s still fast enough to transmit passwords or encryption keys in a few minutes.”

How many times do we have to say it? Just crush the things.

Contact us at Phiston Technologies today. We will use our hard drive crusher and completely annihilate your unwanted hard drives. Never worry again about what they will come up with next.

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